Holden departure hurts all the way down the supply chain

Jim Griffin has grown up a Holden man; his father worked for General Motors (GM) for three decades and he started his own career with the company.

Mr Griffin now heads Diver Consolidated Industries, a parts manufacturer that has supplied components for Holden cars since the 1940s.

He was in Canberra lobbying politicians for greater support of manufacturing industry yesterday when he heard the news about Holden's decision to quit manufacturing in Australia.

"I grew up a GM kid so to see it become an import only business is quite sad," he said.

Diver employs more than 100 workers at its factory at Reservoir, in Melbourne's north, and more than half its output is delivered to Holden factories.

"It's a significant portion of our sales and that, added to Ford - which would be another 10 to 15 per cent - means that in a 2016-17 timeframe we're going to radical reductions in the revenue we're receiving from those customers," Mr Griffin said

Metal stamping, welding and product engineering are all services Diver provides for Holden and Mr Griffin is now hoping to diversify his output to keep his staff on.

"Our objective is to keep people employed and to keep manufacturing in Australia," he said.

"The work that we've been doing for the last four or five years on diversification will continue, more effort will be put into now that we know where Holden is going."

In recent years Diver has started producing a range of other products including hospital bed parts, truck steps and even heat shields for racing cars.

But the pain of Holden leaving does not end with Mr Griffin, dozens of other second tier suppliers to Diver Consolidated will be left without contracts.

Just down the road, nestled between an auto wreckers and a scrap yard, Raymond Sassine, runs a take away store. For the past eight years he has been supplying lunches and restocking the fridges with milk at Diver.

"I go down every morning, the people are friendly and this morning I have a lot of unhappy customers," he said.